And for the first time in months, Maggie felt something powerful well up inside her. She worried for Frank and Cal. She actually cared — and cared a lot. It was actual, genuine, one hundred percent real emotion — a shit-ton of it cascading inside her. Worry and grief, fear… and anger.
Lots of anger.
She reached out and could sense three minds ahead of her, none of them Frank or Cal, all buzzing with new tensions and worries. So, before she even reached the mouth of the tunnel, her mind grasped the strings of these emotions and began twisting… hard.
The screams were beautiful.
Then the guns started going off. The outline of the end of the tunnel expanded as she raced closer, and she twisted again, even harder. Fuck you. Be afraid. I’m coming and if you don’t fucking flee right now, I’m going to make you die of pure fucking terror.
She was so occupied that she charged through the mouth without realizing it — and suddenly started falling.
With a scream, she twisted her body just enough for her hands to catch the lip of the tunnel, saving her from falling into the cistern. Swearing enough to make a sailor turn red, she grasped at a rope that had been anchored there and quickly rappelled down into the darkness, even as bullets careened off the stone several feet away. She’d lost the emotional grip she had on the people here, unable to concentrate on them while at the same time keeping herself from falling. Thankfully, aiming in the dark was a bitch for anyone, and she managed to get to the bottom and take cover behind a pillar.
She reached out again, finding those threads of fear, and pulled as hard as she could, watching the threads in her mind’s eye turn bright red as they became taut. The shooting stopped, and the screams of terrified men echoed in the chamber, along with their fleeing footsteps.
Peeking around the corner of the pillar, she saw Cal was there, lying on the ground at the very edge of the light, unconscious; that’s why she couldn’t sense him. She knelt down beside him and saw he was breathing. Thank God. She then scanned the rest of the room as best she could, trying to figure out what had happened to Frank. Was he shot? Knocked out and captured? She looked back at the tunnel, then across the cavern… to a massive pillar. And at the base of it was a dark, crumpled heap.
Maggie ran over to him and struggled to remember the cursory first aid training she’d received at Area 51. First, assess the situation. Patient unconscious. Blood at his mouth and nose. Legs askew and, at second glance, at horrible angles.
Pulse. She put two fingers to Frank’s neck and felt a heartbeat. That was a start. She put her hand against his nose and mouth, and felt breath. Good. After that… well, she knew she shouldn’t move him, and wasn’t quite sure how she would, anyway. He seemed to have a head wound in addition to all the damage to his legs. Maybe his spine, too, for all she knew.
She looked around and went through her options. Cal would be their best bet. He would probably be able to stabilize Frank, maybe even get him walking again. She started scrambling toward him to figure out his condition… then felt two more minds entering her range. Had the goons in the chamber doubled back? Should she have followed them?
Didn’t matter. They’d run again if they got closer — and if they didn’t, she’d make their hearts burst. She started to reach out with her mind, waiting to grasp at the threads of their emotions as soon as they presented themselves.
Then her clutch started vibrating.
She reached in and pulled out her compact, flipping it open. “Where are you, dammit?” she hissed quietly.
“We’re in a big old underground vault of some kind, with pillars,” Ellis replied. “Where are you?”
Maggie ran over and grabbed the left-behind lantern, raising it high. “Over here!” she called out, her voice racing and bouncing around the chamber.
Two sets of footsteps echoed through the cistern as Ellis and Danny ran toward her. “Where’s Frank and Cal?” Danny demanded. “There are at least two Variants down here that weren’t around an hour ago.”
She pointed. “Both down. Frank’s hurt bad. Cal, I don’t know. It was… I don’t know what. They flew.”
Ellis ran over to Frank while Danny knelt down next to Cal. “‘They flew,’” Danny repeated, a statement of numb disbelief, as he checked Cal over. “Probably just the result of one of the Variants. Who knows what the other one might be able to do. We need to get out of here now. Right now.”
“We need Cal awake. He’s the only one who can get Frank moving. Between the two of them…” Maggie’s voice trailed off as her ears pricked up. There was a new sound barely audible in the air, something she couldn’t put her finger on, like a low background hum.
Danny heard it too, pausing and cocking his head for a moment. Then he stood up suddenly. “Oh, shit. Water.”
Maggie paled as dust started falling from the ancient ceiling and bits of masonry began raining down the walls and pillars. “They’re flooding the place?”
“Probably,” Danny said, racing into action. “Give me a hand.”
Together, Maggie and Danny carried and dragged Cal over to Ellis, who remained at Frank’s side by the base of the pillar.
“What the hell’s that noise, and what the hell are we supposed to do now?” he said. Maggie could sense Ellis was near breaking point.
Danny knelt down next to him, grabbed his shoulders, and got in front of his face. “Ellis, listen to me. I think they’re going to flood the cistern. But you can save us. All of us.”
Wide-eyed, Ellis gawked back at Danny. “How the hell am I supposed to—” He stopped midsentence as he suddenly understood.
“Change it. Change it into something else,” Danny urged as he looked at his feet. A thin stream of water flowed across the floor of the cistern, a harbinger of the wave to come. “We don’t have time. Make a stone wall. Make a dome. Keep us safe.”
Looking from Danny to Maggie, the color gone from his skin, Ellis shook his head to clear his thoughts and began nodding. “Yeah… yeah. I think I can do that. I can do that. Yeah.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, Danny stood up and motioned to Maggie. “Put Cal next to Frank. We need to gather around this pillar. Ellis can then form the wall around us. The water’s flowing from that direction,” he said, pointing. “Start building there, and form it up around and behind us as you go.”
Ellis put his hands down in the water — it was about a half-inch deep and flowing faster now — and closed his eyes. The water around his hand immediately went dark and gray, as if muddied, and the color spread outward all around Ellis. Then the mud solidified in a second wave, becoming smooth rock that thinly coated the cistern floor. “I think I got it. But I can’t build off it. Not working like that.”
“Then think!” Danny urged. “You got a lot of water coming. We need to put something between it and us!”
Ellis looked up and saw white-capped water at the very edge of the light. “It’s coming!” He screwed his eyes shut and shoved his hands back down into the now three-inch-deep water.
“Get behind the pillar!” Maggie shouted over the increasing roar of water. “Drag them over!”
As she dashed over to Cal’s limp form and grabbed a leg, Maggie thought she heard shouting — but the din of the rushing water was growing too loud to hear what was said. She pulled for all she was worth, slowly dragging Cal toward the pillar.
But it was too late. A wall of water at least ten feet high rose toward them now out of the darkness, rushing and roaring. Ellis was still out in front of them, completely exposed to the oncoming wave, his hands moving across the water at his feet, quickly turning it to stone. He was as afraid as anyone whose head she’d ever been in.